Noriega Aide Describes Cooperation With C.I.A.

By LARRY ROHTER,

Published: February 20, 1992

MIAMI, Feb. 19—
Testifying on videotape from a Panamanian prison, a former aide-de-camp of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today told of his country's dealings with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli military and recounted General Noriega's quick reaction to an assassination plot against him.

Maj. Cleto Hernandez, a member of General Noriega's personal staff who was also in charge of counterintelligence in Panama, denied repeatedly that he had ever provided protection for cocaine traffickers on orders from the deposed Panamanian leader, as prosecutors have contended. But in his most interesting testimony, though tangential to the charges against General Noriega, he painted a picture of a close relationship between Panamanian and American intelligence agencies. Guest of the C.I.A.

Major Hernandez told the prosecution and defense lawyers who questioned him in Modelo Jail in Panama City that from 1972 through the late 1980's, he and General Noriega had regular "contact with the C.I.A. directly." He said he had also passed on information to a number of American agencies, including the United States Embassy's Military Group and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

As part of his duties, he said, he kept American Embassy officials informed about the labor and student movements in Panama, especially about their plans for anti-American demonstrations and activities. He said he was also flown to C.I.A. headquarters along with his counterparts from Honduras, Costa Rica and other Central American countries to share intelligence with American officials.

"Those meetings took place at the C.I.A. in Virginia," Major Hernandez said without giving any dates. "They told us to go there, and they'd pay our trip up there." Meeting in Israel

He said that Panama collected information abroad, "especially in neighboring countries," and that some of the information was shared with the United States. "We gathered information from everywhere," he said, though he added that he did not know whether information about Cuba and Fidel Castro had been passed to the C.I.A.

On a trip to France in 1984, Major Hernandez said, General Noriega received a telephone call from Panama about a plot to assassinate him and other Panamanian officials. The general responded by placing under house arrest a subordinate suspected of involvement in the plot and by shifting his travel routes, but he continued on to Israel, where he met with military and intelligence officials before traveling to New York and Havana.

There was no mention of what General Noriega discussed with Israeli officials, though Major Hernandez identified Mike Harari, a former Israeli intelligence official who later became what has been described as the general's most trusted confidant, as a member of the Panamanian party. United States military and intelligence officials have said Mr. Harari coordinated Israeli weapons sales in Central and South America in the 1980's.

Major Hernandez is the first of three jailed Panamanian military officials who have agreed to speak on behalf of their former commander-in-chief by means of the unusual videotape depositions. He is to be followed by Col. Nivaldo Madrinan, head of the national investigative police under General Noriega, and Lucinio Miranda, a senior official in the police narcotics division.

All three men were captured in the American military invasion of Panama in December 1989 and arrested by Panama's new civilian government. They are awaiting trial on charges that include murder, torture and lesser violations of human rights. They were interviewed last month in Panama City by prosecution and defense lawyers in the presence of a Panamanian magistrate.

Major Hernandez was preceded on the witness stand by Adm. Daniel J. Murphy, who was deputy director under George Bush during his tenure as Director of Central Intelligence in 1976 and was Mr. Bush's chief of staff during the first five years he served as Vice President.

Called by the defense, Admiral Murphy testified that during the more than three years in the early 1980's that he supervised Mr. Bush's task force on drugs, "the Panamanian government cooperated in all our requests to board Panamanian vessels on the high seas."

But Admiral Murphy also said that such requests were, as it happened, limited to ships suspected of carrying marijuana across the Caribbean to the United States.

General Noriega is on trial on 10 charges of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering, and any efforts he may have made either to assist or deter marijuana shipments do not figure in the indictment.

Court records made public this week indicate that Mr. Noriega's lead counsel, Frank A. Rubino, has run into difficulties with Judge William M. Hoeveler, who complained during a mid-December conference with prosecution and defense lawyers that Mr. Rubino was "trying to circumvent the Court's rulings" and "pulling out all the stops" with "attempts at humor at witnesses' expense." He ordered Mr. Rubino to halt such conduct or face sanctions.

"You ask questions that you know are objectionable, even after I have sustained objections," Judge Hoeveler warned. "I want you to know I am going to start making a record of them, with a view, when the case is over, toward taking disciplinary action, if it continues."

Today, for the second day, General Noriega was without Mr. Rubino's services. A former race car driver, Mr. Rubino was injured last weekend in a motorcycle accident in Houston, where he was attending a convention of defense lawyers, and he has not returned.